ISIS_Governance

MIDDLE EAST SECURITY REPORT 22
ISIS Governance in Syria
By Charles C. Caris & Samuel Reynolds
Following the seizure of Mosul, ISIS Emir Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi publicly announced the formation of
an “Islamic Caliphate”, 1 articulating a political vision to justify ISIS’s ongoing military campaign to
consolidate territory across Iraq and Syria. 2 The announcement of the Caliphate seems to realize ISIS’s
grand strategy of first establishing control of terrain through military conquest and then reinforcing this
control through governance. This grand strategy proceeds in phases that have been laid out by ISIS itself
in its publications, and elaborates a vision that it hopes will attract both fighters and citizens to its nascent
state. 3 The declaration of a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, however, raises the question: can ISIS govern?
By the time Baghdadi officially announced the Islamic
Caliphate in June 2014, ISIS had already been conducting
governance activities in parts of Syria for at least seven
months. A joint political and military campaign by ISIS has
been underway in Syria, particularly in the northeastern
provincial capital of ar-Raqqa 4 where ISIS has built a holistic
system of governance that includes religious, educational,
judicial, security, humanitarian, and infrastructure projects,
among others. Raqqa is the central city in ISIS’s territorial
network, the first city where ISIS established exclusive
control, and thus it offers the most fully developed example
of ISIS’s Caliphate vision in practice.
From a theoretical perspective, the ISIS governance project
is an extension of what it calls imamah, or leadership. 5 As ISIS
argued at length in a recent English-language periodical,
the concept of imamah extends to both religious and political
affairs. 6 Not only is Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi the professed
leading religious authority in the newly-declared Caliphate,
but he is also the senior statesman of ISIS, overseeing all
political and governance-related activities that will cause
ISIS to become a permanent fixture. Like the ISIS military
strategy, these campaigns reflect thoughtful design, to
transition from military control to political control. ISIS’s
Caliphate, although it was seized through military force, must
perform many of the internal functions of a traditional state
in order to remain.
As ISIS conducts its military campaign in Iraq and Syria, it is
important to observe how ISIS pursued this transition inside
Raqqa and other Syrian cities. Their example may serve as a
roadmap for what to expect from ISIS in Mosul and other
locations in Iraq where ISIS has established military control.
The degree to which ISIS can adapt its Syrian solutions to
an Iraqi context will be an important test of the Caliphate’s
ability to erase modern borders, a clear and often repeated
goal. 7 ISIS demonstrated the importance of this message in
a literal way when it bulldozed a portion of the Sykes-Picot
border separating Syria and Iraq in June 2014. 8 ISIS will
have to contend with resistance from some Iraqis and Syrians,
though ISIS has also fashioned several ways to do this in Raqqa
and other cities in Syria. Despite much of its messaging about
idyllic life in the Caliphate, ISIS social control is brutal and
comprehensive, as this report will demonstrate.
Information compiled for this report is largely drawn from
ISIS self-reporting, which is both a primary source and a
clear propaganda tool (see, for example, Appendix). 9 ISIS
has been broadcasting its military and social programs with
photos, videos, graphic art, and print media as part of a
sophisticated political campaign. The political campaign
is linked to ISIS statecraft, and it provides an important
window into what ISIS chooses to emphasize as primary
elements of its governance. Moreover, the proliferation of
ISIS English-language print media beginning in May 2014
and describing life within Raqqa speak to the intent of ISIS
to recruit not only fighters, but also citizens, to come and live
in a functioning and thriving community. In reality, life in
Raqqa is likely not thriving, and this report will explore ISIS
representation with real estimates for events on the ground.
Nevertheless, this report will carefully examine the photos
and videos posted by ISIS that demonstrate the structure and
scale of their governance and social programs.
Combined with other sources, this paper will examine
how ISIS came to establish urban control in Raqqa and
other parts of Syria. First, the paper will describe how ISIS
consolidated military control over Raqqa by eliminating
www.Understandingwar.org 9